Adventures in Anxiety: How Dropping Food on the Floor Means We're Going to Die on the Streets

I'm pretty sure I have un-diagnosed generalized anxiety disorder.  Most of the time I'm fine, but sometimes even the smallest and most innocuous stimulus can start a ridiculous spiral in my brain.  I'm proud to say I can go from zero to utter catastrophe in a few small mental leaps.

Let's say, for instance, that someone leaves a spoon with food on it in the sink without rinsing or washing it.  Here's what happens in my head:

There is a dirty spoon in the sink - therefore - we will get ants or other bugs - therefore - the cats will become diseased - therefore - more bugs will come - therefore - our condo will become infested with bugs and disease - therefore - the condo association will ask us to leave (of course, we'd have to keep paying the mortgage) - therefore - we will be homeless - therefore - we will die on the streets.

See how easy that was?  There is a dirty spoon in the sink = we will die on the streets.

This time, the trigger was my husband's insanely large appetite.  Admittedly, I did not grow up around a lot of men.  Apart from my father (who I never remember eating that much), I really didn't have a very good understanding of how much food most men eat. They eat a TON of food, you guys.  For example, I bought two bags of clementines (each contained about 30 of them).  From when I bought them on Sunday to when we ran out of them on Thursday, I had eaten only about 10 of them.

I am assuming that one way or another, the remaining 50 clementines ended up in my husband's mouth.  He is almost always hungry and I am almost always anxious about it.  I have this terrible fear that he is going to starve or get scurvy (obviously not this week, though) or that he will lose weight and his family will notice and hate me for not feeding him enough.

Part of this is because I grew up half-Lebanese, which means if you live in my house, I am going to spend 75% of our interactions trying to feed you.  I will do the same thing if you visit my house, FYI.  If you're hungry and you're hanging out with me, you're in the right place.

Recently, we bought into a CSA (community supported agriculture) program through a local farm.  In this week's share, one of the things we got was an eggplant.  I was really excited about this, because I love Chinese food and I think I'm pretty okay at cooking it and one of my favorite dishes is eggplant in garlic sauce.  I was also excited because I figured I could make one stir fry and then have it be a large enough amount of food.  Basically, I figured this stir fry was going to be a temporary answer to the nagging feeling that I am starving my husband to death.

So I got the wok out and started making eggplant in garlic sauce.  The apartment smelled awesome and I had a lovely stir fry at the end of it.  Definitely enough, I thought.  And tasty!  Zack agreed.  

So I made a pot of rice and let that cool off a little bit.  I started packing everything up for our lunches tomorrow and had to stop when I realized that Zack's lunch bag was nowhere to be found.  I asked him where it was and he told me that it broke.  To just use some other bag for now.  My first inclination was to use a blue plastic bag, but I decided against it.  For some reason, I thought it wouldn't be strong enough to hold a glass container of stir fry.  Against my first instinct, I decided to use an old square shopping bag (the thick paper kind with the strings for handles - you know what bag I mean - like a gift bag, sort of).  The bottom fell out of this plan.  Quite literally.

So just like that, there went my temporary anxiety antidote and thus began the spiral.  Obviously since there was no eggplant in garlic sauce, there would be no lunch whatsoever for anyone and both of us would be loopy at work and Zack wouldn't do his job well.

Then, of course, he'd get fired and since we can't survive on my income alone, we'd just get further and further behind in the bills until eventually we'd have to give the cats to a better home.  Then I'd feel guilty about that and I'd miss them terribly, not to mention their new people friends would silently judge me for being a terrible cat parent.  Zack would become increasingly despondent and that, of course would be my fault.  Because I dropped the stir fry on the floor.

See how easy that was?  I dropped the stir-fry = we're homeless, possibly with mental issues.

Once I had composed myself, I made another stir fry (with yellow squash).  It wasn't as good, of course and we're out one lidded glass container now.  It took me hours to get over the I-wasted-food guilt and then hours to get over my oh-god-what-if-I-really-AM-starving Zack guilt.  

I'm mentally exhausted now, all because I have a hard time controlling my anxiety.  I have to think that there is some purpose for it.  That in a post-apocalyptic world, let's say, the fight or flight response will be totally necessary and well timed.  

I always tell myself that in the right circumstances, I'd be like Tina Turner in Beyond Thunderdome.